Ed Symkus reviews movies for GateHouse News Service. A longtime features writer and film critic for TV, radio, newspapers and magazines, he can often be found at film junkets talking with celebrities. Find out what they have to say here.

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About Time movie

Nov. 7, 2013
12:17 p.m.

It’s about time Richard Curtis made a film like “About Time.” As a writer, he’s best known in movie circles for a trilogy of romantic comedies: “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill” and “Love Actually” (which he also directed). But a look at his three-decade-long résumé reveals quite a writing range in movies and TV, from “Bridget Jones’s Diary” to “War Horse” to “Mr. Bean.” With “About Time,” it’s a return to directing as well as to the frothy romantic feel of those Hugh Grant titles listed up top. But now Curtis has taken what was becoming formulaic, and juiced it up with the addition of a fantasy element.This one’s a time travel movie, one that goes in some marvelously inventive directions in the genre, yet still has a few of the problems inherent in practically all of the time travel films that have come before it. But put up against the sweet and funny nature of the script and the actors bringing it to life, the problems – mostly about the “rules” of time travel – are minimal.“About Time” begins with shy, gawky, good-natured Tim (Domhnall Gleeson – Bill Weasley in the final Potter films, Levin in “Anna Karenina”), just turned 21, being pulled aside by his loving dad (Bill Nighy) and told of a closely guarded secret: that all the men in the family, when reaching 21, acquire the ability to travel back in time.Nighy certainly has nothing left to prove of his acting abilities, but he knocks this role out of the park right there, nervously trying to present this news to Tim. Domhnall responds in kind, acting-wise, with the startled response, “If that’s true, which it isn’t ...”But it is. All a man in the family has to do is enter a dark place – a closet will do – close his fists tightly, and think of another time, another place. “Use it to make your life the way you want it to be,” says dad. Which translates as, “If you make a mistake, like say, not kissing a girl when she obviously wants to be kissed, but you’re too inexperienced to realize it ... well, you can relive that whole scene, and do it right.”It doesn’t take long for Tim to become a believer, to understand that there’s such thing as a second chance. It’s a great story idea, but Curtis makes the wise decision to keep it only a part, and not the backbone, of his film. Early on, you think that it’s going to enter “Groundhog Day” territory, and though it does dance there for a short while, it goes on to be more about family dynamics (Tim’s is packed with the requisite quirky characters that fill so many of Curtis’ scripts), about a warm and funny romance between Tim and the equally innocent and shy Mary (Rachel McAdams), and about the ever-solid relationship between Tim and his dad. The film is also much sweeter than the comparatively cynical “Ground hog Day.”But “About Time” is not all light and frothy. It also involves a bitter playwright named Harry (Tom Hollander), the aftermath of a car accident, a bout of alcoholism, a couple in an abusive relationship, and a terrible illness.Yet Curtis and company get us through all of that while continuously making us smile. The breezy, romantic aspect of the film is helped along by ingredients such as a very funny sex scene, a bit of chaste nudity, and some sparkling comic dialogue that’s mostly delivered in a blurted-out manner. Complications arise, having to do with those rules of time travel and the realization that, as Ray Bradbury suggested in his outstanding story “A Sound of Thunder,” if you change something in the past, that act could lead to other unexpected changes. But don’t worry; Bradbury’s story was very dark, and this one isn’t. All Tim and his dad need to remember is that they can change things, but they can’t necessarily fix them.